Witness Fall 2017

mbmission.org

Fall 2017

one mission L O C A L N AT I O N A L G L O B A L

Witness Fall 2017

Contents Editorial: One Mission: Global..................................2 Still Smiling................................................................4 To Change One Life...................................................6 The Runaway.............................................................8

one mission

GLOBAL

By Randy Friesen, General Director

Street Hockey in Berlin...........................................10 Two Meters Square.................................................12 10:02 .......................................................................14

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Staff Editor-in-Chief......................................Randy Friesen Managing Editor............................... Mark JH Klassen Layout & Design.................................. Darcy Scholes Illustration & Design............................. Colton Floris Writing & Prayer Mobilization.................Nikki White Media Team Lead.................................Larry Neufeld Circulation & Administration..................Ann Wiebe

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On a recent flight from North Africa to Turkey, I met an elderly Middle Eastern man who is a prominent architect and businessman. It became quickly apparent that he is also a “man of peace.” The previous day, he had met with the Minister of Cultural Affairs of a North African country to propose renovating the abandoned historic Jewish synagogue in the capital city and turning it into a cultural center. He was on his way to meet the Chief Rabbi in Eastern Europe to offer to restore Jewish cemeteries in the region. That might seem reasonable if this man was Jewish, but he is a Muslim!

I talked to him about the peace camps that we have been supporting in the region, and about the one that was taking place that same week with Syrians, Turks and North Americans. He asked if we had ever documented the camps. So I pulled out my laptop and showed him a video from last summer. He watched the images of peace and heard testimonies of forgiveness and reconciliation. Before it was even finished, he turned to me with tears in his eyes and asked, “Who are you?”

He was very curious about where this vision for peace had come from, and so I talked about Jesus as the Prince of Peace. The man immediately offered to help in any way he could to open doors in the region. He had seen too

much violence and bloodshed, and now he was crying out for peace.

The very next day, he texted me and quoted from the Book of Ruth, “your people will be my people, and your God my God.”

He had seen too much violence, and now he was crying out for peace.

My prayer is that this man will meet the Prince of Peace and that God will use him to bring the love and hope of Jesus to his people.

Several years ago, David Bosch, a missiologist from South Africa, said, “In the future, peacemaking will be evangelism.” This is the reality of global mission today, and it’s happening all over the world. People are desperate for peace, and they are finding hope in an encounter with the Prince of Peace. When it gets very dark, the light shines brighter.

As a mission rooted in the historic peace church with clear evangelical convictions, we believe peacemaking is introducing others to the reality of Jesus in our lives.

I was recently in Iraq hosting a series of outreach meetings with a coworker. The meeting hall was filled with survivors of civil war, many of them refugees. Hundreds of people received prayer and encountered the power and presence of Jesus. One man, previously a prominent Muslim teacher, told me about his recent conversion and asked for prayer. He was formerly an advocate for the violence legitimized by religion, but Jesus has transformed him. He said that there are many leaders like him who are deeply questioning their religious beliefs because of widespread violence and the lack of integrity among their leadership.

There is a spiritual shaking happening throughout this region and around the

world in these days. We are praying for the strongholds of darkness to fall and the light of Jesus to shine!

During several days of ministry in refugee camps in the region, we interviewed many Yazidi women who had been tortured and abused by extremists. Their stories are being told around the world. In a peace camp setting, where principles of forgiveness were taught, courageous Yazidi women were able to tell their stories and then publicly declare their forgiveness toward their abusers.

Forgiveness is God’s way for the cycle of violence and revenge killing to stop.

If the Gospel is a house with many doors, the door marked peace and forgiveness has a long line outside of it with people waiting to enter.

Jesus instructed his disciples, “When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him, if not, it will return to you” (Luke 10:5-6). This simple strategy of Jesus describes his peace as the value added that we bring to new relationships, homes and communities we enter. It’s still our best strategy in global mission today!

The Gospel of peace, which is full of God’s grace and mercy in Christ, has been transforming lives since Jesus defeated sin and death on the cross. This past year, we were entrusted with over 1300 short-term mission participants who served on assignments for as short as a week and as long as a year. They served in locations around the world alongside 120 long-term cross-cultural workers and over 300 national workers in various community transformation strategies. We believe there are many more Christ followers looking for ways to serve and learn in global mission, and we are here to serve you!

New models of mission like peace camps for youth in conflict zones have been amazing in their effectiveness to quickly establish trust between Christ followers and

people from other faith backgrounds.

The accessibility of these short-term opportunities for a broader cross section of the Church, combined with their strategic role in bringing a message of healing in conflict zones, means more fruit in the lives of many more people.

In North America, we continue to look for more integrated approaches to mission strategy with immigrant people groups, both in their new countries and in their countries of origin. Additionally, as our society becomes more secularized, we recognize that we are as much a mission field as anywhere, in need of missionaries from other parts of the world.

This is the new reality of global mission, which is “from everywhere to everywhere.” Our vision and passion continues to be global church planting among the least reached. As with Paul, it is our ambition to preach the Gospel where Christ is not known (Romans 15:20).

As with Paul, it is our ambition to preach the Gospel where Christ is not known.

We want to see the global Church mobilized into global mission. We want to see Christ followers from everywhere responding to where global needs are greatest, whether that is in war-torn regions of the Middle East or in the mega-cities of Asia or in the rural Midwest of North America. We want to see more of God’s servants engaged globally as peacemakers, church planters, and community changers, so that the Gospel of Christ will continue to bring transformation, healing and hope.

Together, we are working with the global church to embrace one mission – local, national and global.

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STILL SMILING CENTRAL ASIA By a worker in a restricted area One year ago, in the Fall 2016 issue of Witness, we featured a story about a young woman from a Muslim background whose name means “Always Smiling.” It documented this woman’s journey to faith in Jesus. The article below, written by the same author after her most recent visit to Central Asia, is the amazing continuation of the young woman’s story.

We waded out until the salty warm water reached our waists’ height before stopping to smile at each other. This was the moment we’d both been waiting for.

Since arriving the night before, my friend had not stopped talking about how she wanted to be baptized. We’d been communicating online for months and sharing prayer requests back and forth since last summer when my friend had chosen to follow Jesus.

I had no idea I would see her this soon again, never mind standing with her as she publicly declared to the world her belief in the One who had been pursuing her for years through dreams.

Standing together out in the water, I asked her, “Do you believe in Jesus, that he is God’s Son who came for you, who paid the price and bore your sins on the cross?”

“Yes, yes, yes, I believe!” she answered with a big smile.

“Based on the confession of your faith,” I continued, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” And under she went.

Both of us were crying as she came out of the water. Partly from the salt stinging our eyes, partly that neither of us could believe what God had done. My heart was full.

But it was not over.

I had flown to Central Asia a few days early to meet with this young woman in the town where she was currently studying. A year ago we had met at a peace camp in another location where she had shared the details of her spiritual journey with me and had embraced Jesus as her Savior. This year, she shared more about what had happened after camp, how she had declared her allegiance with Jesus to her roommate. My friend had expected that 4 | witness

her roommate, another young Muslim, might be shocked.

But instead, the roommate demanded that my friend tell her everything she knew about Jesus. In response, the roommate declared that she too wanted to follow him.

Despite having never read the Bible or ever talking to a Christian, the roommate had become drawn to Jesus while studying Art History in university. Her Muslim professor had walked the class through the Gospels and showed how the different events surrounding Jesus was portrayed in ancient sculptures, paintings and tiles. Mary’s story impressed her, the apostles wowed her, but mostly, she was drawn by what she saw in Jesus. Later, she bought a cross necklace at a jewelry store in town and started wearing it, even though she wasn’t exactly sure what it meant. Finally, there was someone to answer all of her questions about Jesus.

“There are no churches in this city. Actually, I think we are the only believers, so we are the church here.”

The day of my friend’s baptism, as we returned from the beach, her roommate was waiting for us at the door.

“Tomorrow, it is my turn”, she declared. “I cannot wait.

There are no churches in this city. Actually, I think we are the only believers, so we are the church here.”

That weekend, we were the church together, in that small city, which I had never heard of before and could barely find on Google maps. We prayed together, talked through what baptism meant, and shared our stories.

On my third night there, together on the balcony of their teeny apartment, my friend and I had the pleasure of baptizing her roommate. As we filled a large bucket full of water, she was dancing around the kitchen with anticipation. I had rarely seen someone so full of joy.

Afterward, with her hair dripping wet, we wrapped our arms around her and prayed over her. Then she asked me for a Bible and admitted that she had never actually opened the cover of one.

In John 3, Nicodemus asked Jesus, “How can a man be reborn?” I asked myself, “How can these friends of mine in Central Asia meet Jesus without having ever attended a church service or read the Bible?”

Jesus responded to Nicodemus, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).

I was amazed, and thankful. I felt privileged to be able to walk alongside my new friends, to support them in their new faith, and to connect them with local believers.

KEEP PRAYING Please continue to pray for this young woman in Central Asia, her roommate, and her family members as they follow Jesus and testify to his love and power in their lives.

We hope that every story in Witness is used by our readers as a tool for prayer.

As you read about different people from different countries, ask God to bless them with strength and grace. Although we cannot publish follow-up stories in every case, when possible we like to share updates, to show our readers how their prayers are being answered and how God’s faithfulness is being shown to people around the world.

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TO CHANGE ONE LIFE MONGOLIA

By Mark JH Klassen

“When I was three months old, my parents brought me to an orphanage,” Saikhnaa explained about her childhood in Mongolia. “I was the third daughter in my family. They didn’t want me.”

In the beginning, Saikhnaa did odd jobs like sweeping, mopping, washing dishes, and ironing. She spoke no English and the Baergs spoke very little Mongolian. But they were learning the language, and she helped them with that too.

Two years later, Saikhnaa’s aunt came to the orphanage and adopted her. So Saikhnaa grew up with her cousins and didn’t know she was adopted until she was ten years old. But her second family had its own share of problems and dysfunctions. By the time she was fourteen, Saikhnaa’s adopted father was killed, along with her oldest brother, both in alcohol-related deaths. Shortly after, her adopted mother suffered from a mental breakdown.

“The more time I spent at their house, the more I was overwhelmed by their love and kindness.” Saikhnaa had never seen a family interact with each other like that. She was amazed by the love that they shared for one another.

“I had to quit school and go to work to support my family,” Saikhnaa continued. “I loved school, but I needed to work.”

She was only in grade six.

Her adopted sister was cleaning for a foreign family in the city, so she asked if she knew anyone else who needed house help. Her sister immediately thought about a Canadian family.

That same day, Robert and Marlene Baerg were praying around their breakfast table. They were new long-term workers with MB Mission who had recently arrived in Mongolia from Canada. The lady who was previously helping in their home had just broken her ankle, so they were asking God to send them someone else, not only to employ, but to share their lives with and love into God’s kingdom.

The next day, Saikhnaa knocked on their door.

“When I met Rob, I was scared,” she recalled from their first meeting. “Here was this tall man with a long beard. And Marlene was so friendly. I thought to myself, ‘Who are these people?’”

Saikhnaa lied to the Baergs, telling them she was sixteen instead of fourteen so they would hire her. She worked for them in the mornings, and worked in a bar in the evenings.

Most days, she was cleaning at the bar until 2 a.m. and was at the Baergs by 8 a.m.

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“The more time I spent in their house, the more I was overwhelmed by their love and kindness.”

“Then, one day, while I was ironing clothes, they invited me to join them for lunch. It was a huge thing for me. They were having corn chowder – I remember that.”

“I felt very honoured and loved by them,” Saikhnaa recalled.

“So I went and joined them at their table, and they asked me if they could pray before the meal. I didn’t know about Jesus but, of course, I agreed that they should pray. So we stood, held hands, bowed our heads and they prayed in English. I couldn’t understand, but I was very touched by their genuine faith. When everyone had their eyes closed, I looked around and I said to myself, ‘I want what they have.’”

That was the beginning of Saikhnaa’s journey to faith in Jesus.

After that, she was more and more curious about the faith of the Baergs. And she opened up more and more to Marlene about the challenges she faced, and her family background.

“Still, sometimes I was so shocked by their kindness that I couldn’t take it anymore. While I was working in their home, I would often become overwhelmed. I would lock myself in the bathroom and just take a deep breath and tell myself that this was real. It wasn’t a dream. I would ask myself, ‘Why are they so different? Why are they so loving?’”

on to study with YWAM in several different locations around the world and finished her Bachelor’s degree in Primary Health Care and Counselling. Afterward, she returned to Mongolia to work alongside the Baergs in their new ministry, Trees of Life Restoration, a community development project in rural Mongolia.

Saikhnaa and her husband Travis at the Baerg’s home in Selenge, Mongolia During that time, Saikhnaa received a random call from her birth sister who had recently become a follower of Jesus. She invited her to a church where they were doing the Alpha course.

“When I heard them talk about God and explain it in Mongolian, I realized that that’s what the Baergs had. At Alpha, I learned about what I had seen lived out in the Baerg’s home. In my own language, I was taught about God’s love, the Holy Spirit and what it meant to follow Jesus.”

Shortly after embracing Jesus herself, the Baergs offered to sponsor Saikhnaa to attend a Discipleship Training School (DTS) with Youth with a Mission (YWAM) in another part of Mongolia.

Initially, she turned down their offer, because her family depended on her earnings in order to keep food on the table. But they said they would also keep paying her salary.

At the same time, her adopted mother became more unstable and ended up forcing Saikhnaa out of her home. “So I took my things and went to DTS, and in many ways, that’s where I truly met Jesus. It was an amazing experience.”

The first thing she did when she came back from YWAM was confess to the

Baergs that she was actually sixteen and not eighteen. They gladly forgave her and continued to mentor her, and to invite her into their family.

“It was during that time that they really became my parents. Sometimes, they would introduce me as their Mongolian daughter. I started call them, Mom and Dad, and their children became my siblings.”

In March 2017, Saikhnaa was married to Travis Armstrong, an American who had also served with YWAM and had recently moved to Mongolia to work with Trees of Life. Together, they began to serve alongside Robert and Marlene in their efforts to develop community and share the Gospel with the people of the Selenge Province in northern Mongolia.

Recently, as Marlene was reflecting on their relationship with Saikhnaa and their fifteen-year journey in Mongolia, she said, “It’s a miracle, really, how Saikhnaa became a part of our family, and how much God changed her. And now, through her, he is changing her family and so many others in Mongolia.

Even if God brought us all the way to Mongolia to change one life – it was worth it.”

Eventually, Robert and Marlene gave Saikhnaa an opportunity to go back to school. She was thrilled. They arranged for another job so Watch our latest video, “Through the Trees” for an she could still indepth look at the Baergs’ work in Mongolia with provide for her Trees of Life Restoration. adopted family mbmission.org/through-the-trees as well as earn money to finish her education.

She started at sixth grade and, within a few years, graduated from high school.

VIDEO

Saikhnaa went

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T H E R U N AWAY

By Karen Huebert-Sanchez

She wore her shame like a second skin. For most of her life, Suree was convinced that she was branded, forever destined to pay penance for her sins, and always on the run.

Her story, like the story of her country, reflects her woundedness.

The shame began at a very young age, when ongoing sexual abuse at the hands of her father and grandfather left her HIV positive. Eventually, Suree was sent away to an orphanage in Bangkok, where lies and financial mismanagement caused it to be shut

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down six years later. She was only fourteen, and homeless, when she came to live at the Abundant Life Home (ALH).

within a week she ran away again.

Workers from the home pursued and found Suree, and brought her into their own home. It lasted two months.

But she was still a runaway.

Suree ran away to her mother who was living in Bangkok in an abusive relationship. When I went there, I was able to convince both mother and daughter that they were in danger, and I brought them to stay at a nearby church. Weeks later, Suree was on the run again. She seemed resigned to life as a homeless outcast, constantly being pursued only to run away again.

For another seven years she continued to run, in and out of Pattaya, in and

For four years, she lived at the home, studying diligently and getting straight A’s. Then, one day, she ran away with a man. Later that night, Suree was found distraught and confused, and was taken to an emergency shelter. At the shelter, no one would eat with her because they knew she was HIV-positive. She cried, begging to return to ALH. She did, but

“I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one.’ I will say to those called ‘Not my people,’ ‘You are my people’; and they will say, ‘You are my God.’” – Hosea 2:23

out of relationships, bearing two children in her restless, self-imposed exile. She grew weary.

Finally, one rainy night in September, Suree called me. She knew she needed to run back to God, and that night she and the father of her youngest child ran into the waiting arms of a Saviour.

Suree moved back to ALH, this time with her boyfriend, Em, and her two children. The couple decided to marry.

It was a simple wedding on the beach, and Suree was a beautiful bride.

She cried and cried. She had never

imagined a day like that, a day when God would take away her shame, and clothe her in white. Finally, she could stop running.

Later, Suree and Em heard God’s call to consider becoming dorm parents to the boys living at the orphanage, children who came from horrendous, abusive circumstances in government orphanages, each one of them a potential runaway needing to be pursued. But Suree understands them.

Their story is her story, and she wants them to be caught by Jesus, as she has been. To be caught by love is a glorious thing.

GIVE Suree found hope and help at the Abundant Life Home in Thailand. If you want to be involved in providing help to other young men and women in Southeast Asia, please consider supporting the Abundant Life Home by going to mbmission.org/donate and referencing project #C0438.

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By Ben Froese Three years ago, I was sitting in a café in Berlin across the table from my German friend. I had just moved into Neukölln, a neighborhood with a notoriously bad reputation. As we were talking about my desire to serve the people of the neighborhood in some way, my friend surprised me with a question, “Why not start a street hockey club?”

“C’mon, this is Germany,” I retorted.

“They don’t like hockey!”

Within days, and with my heart still full of doubts, I wrote up a proposal for a street hockey club in Neukölln and applied for funding from the city.

To my surprise, the city accepted my pitch and I received money to buy equipment.

It was a small beginning. In a soccercrazed part of the world, I never thought that a part of my Canadian

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culture, one of my favourite sports, would ever be used as an opportunity to bring people together. But God proved me wrong.

“C’mon, this is Germany,” I retorted.

“They don’t like hockey!”

We began playing every week outside on the street when the weather was nice. It gave me a chance to meet youth in my neighborhood, and to invite others to join in the fun as well.

But I thought to myself, there’s more.

On a trip back to Canada, I was passing through San Francisco airport when I saw a man in a suit carrying a bag with the logo of the Edmonton Oilers on it, my favourite National Hockey League team while growing up. I approached him and

found out that he was the Assistant General Manager of the team. I tried to contain my excitement, but I proceeded to pepper him with questions. Caught in the moment, I blurted out, “It’s my dream to start an international street hockey tournament in Berlin.”

It was the first time I had spoken about the idea of our street hockey club growing into an international tournament.

The Assistant GM liked the idea and gave me his email address to stay in contact. I could feel the momentum building.

Back in Berlin, one day I saw a man walking down the street wearing a vintage jersey from the Quebec Nordiques, a former NHL team. I was shocked, and immediately approached him. It turned out he was a huge hockey fan who regularly played ice hockey in Berlin. We quickly became

friends and he became a pillar of our street hockey club.

We created the teams, trying to balance them out based on experience and ethnicity. We were amazed at the variety – so many different cultures were represented!

One player was known to us as a far right-wing extremist. We had seen him holding anti-refugee signs during local demonstrations. On that day, we placed him on a team with some refugees and we saw them bond as teammates.

building new friendships with others that they normally wouldn’t be in contact with.

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As I started gathering people who were interested in supporting the tournament, I quickly realized how intercultural the event could be. On our organizing committee we had a Peruvian-German, a Brazilian-German, a Kosovoian-German, a Brit, and a Syrian, not to mention a Canadian.

We were an intercultural team, planning an intercultural event, in a very multicultural city.

One refugee came to play street hockey that day and left with a new friend and a new place to live. For him, the tournament helped him overcome two of the main challenges for refugees in Berlin – finding an apartment, and finding friends. That day, people were brought together through sport.

L O C A L N AT I O N A L G L O B A L

We set a date for the tournament and decided on our venue – Tempelhof, the old airport which had been turned into a park. Our tagline was: “Bringing communities together through sport.”

Through my Syrian friend’s contacts, we scored a key meeting and obtained our main organizer and sponsor. As we shared the dream with others, more partners came on board including the German Ice Hockey Federation, Berlin’s local professional ice hockey team, the Canadian embassy, and numerous refugee shelters.

As the day approached, the weather forecast was for heavy rain, which was really no surprise since Berlin was in the midst of their Regen-Sommer (summer of rain). I religiously checked the forecast, sometimes several times a day. If it rained, we’d have to cancel the event. Two days before, I gave up looking at the forecast and committed myself to just praying.

The day before the event, we started building our playing fields on the old runway. When my wife, Melissa, and the kids visited us in the afternoon, they exclaimed, “For the first time, the weather forecast for tomorrow is sun during the afternoon!”

The next day, over fifty players showed up. It was raining in the morning, but when we were ready to start playing the clouds cleared and the sun began to shine.

The atmosphere was very special.

One participant said, “My highlight was seeing a young woman playing hockey wearing a burqa!”

“My highlight was seeing a young woman playing hockey wearing a burqa!”

The General Secretary of the German Ice Hockey Federation flew in from Munich for the event to observe, and commented, “Everyone is having so much fun, there’s so much joy here today.”

Competition was clearly secondary.

People were having fun together,

Several new partnerships were also formed through the event, including one with a refugee shelter. Now we’re playing hockey indoors at the old Tempelhof Airport Hanger. It’s called “Hanger 1 Hockey,” and it has become a meeting place for refugees and Berliners interested in playing sports together.

Another significant development for me has been that our new Canadian Ambassador to Germany, Stephane Dion, is now a regular at our weekly street hockey club.

Only God can orchestrate such seemingly random circumstances for his kingdom purposes. I have enjoyed the opportunity to use one of passions in serving God in Berlin, and I can’t help but think that it brings a smile to God’s face as well.

TWO METERS SQUARE COLOMBIA

By Nikki White

When armed rebels announced that they were taking over the village, the two hundred inhabitants were told they had two hours to vacate, or be shot. Damaris, eight years old at the time, had just enough time to grab a single change of clothing. Then she and her family fled for their lives.

“There was no time or space to think,” Damaris says. “I pushed the fear down inside me, and locked it in a cage.”

Damaris and her family spent a year finding shelter wherever they could, wandering the Cauca region of rural Colombia. As a Christian, she found herself battling a numbing despair. Where was God? Why had this happened?

Eventually they left the countryside and settled in the city of Cali, thinking it would be safer. They were wrong.

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“Armed men came to our house,” she relates, sitting stiffly.

“They took my aunt and my grandmother, and told us we must pay one million pesos or they would be tortured and killed.” Her aunt was pregnant at the time. The kidnappers took the women to a remote mountain camp, where for eight months they were imprisoned in a cage, two meters square. They were not allowed out, but were forced to live with their own excrement.

“When the police finally found the camp and arrested the men,” Damaris says, “I thought, now everything will be alright.” The trauma, however, left deep scars.

Her father renounced his faith, and the marriage fell apart. The aunt became mentally ill and violent, and had her baby taken away. The grandmother’s health was

shattered, and both the aunt and the grandmother were sent to a hospital to recover.

“But no one recovers here,” Damaris shakes her head. “We avoid eye contact, we do not speak of the unspeakable.

How can we heal?”

Many victims of the fifty years of violent revolution in Colombia refuse to even acknowledge their own need for healing. Ricardo Ballestas, founder of Justapaz, a peace initiative of the MB Conference of Colombia, recounts an example. “One man, his village was a war zone between paramilitary groups and drug traffickers, bullets flying though his windows. But because he was never shot, he says he is not a victim!”

Ballestas’ colleague is Marta Cortes, director of Edupaz, another MB peace initiative. She explains, “When violence becomes normal, our whole way of life is victimized! Even if we lay down our guns, there is a silent weapon inside us, the silence of our own hate and fear.”

“Jesus can bring beauty from ashes and change victims into survivors.”

“That silence,” Damaris says grimly, “Becomes our prison.”

Seventeen years after her own trauma, Damaris decided to break the silence. With a degree in psychology, Damaris now visits the rural villages in Cauca to hold counseling workshops and offer gentle therapy through art and story, drawing out the toxic memories that paralyze victims. She listens to them, weeps with them, then leads them to the only one who can take the twisted story of their lives and change the ending. Jesus can bring beauty from ashes, she tells them, change victims into survivors.

“We heal with forgiveness,” Damaris says. One tangible demonstration of forgiveness was enacted by the small MB Esperanza church in rural Cauca, where pastor Roberto Yhonda mobilized congregants to hold a peace march in defiant celebration of the International Day of Non-Violence. Yhonda invited both soldiers of the national army and armed rebels to lay down their arms and walk with the very village residents that they had once terrorized, uniting their voices in prayer and song.

Children walked with hardened guerillas that day, and mothers held both banners as well as the hands of revolutionaries whose palms were calloused from clutching rifles. Expressions of forgiveness melted hearts, and changed lives.

One such changed life is that of Elmer Idrobo, former commander in the Colombian armed rebel group known as the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarios de Colombia). He had always considered Christians to be his sworn enemies, burning their churches, executing their pastors and hating their Bible for making fighters Damaris become soft and weak.

Then those same Christians reached out to him with forgiveness, and he was unable to withstand God’s love.

“Now,” Idrobo says, smiling, “I thank God that I am able to be with Christians, and have no desire to kidnap or kill them.” Today Idrobo preaches the Gospel in the prisons of Cauca, to drug traffickers, rebels and other excombatants like himself – including his own son.

On June 27, 2017, representatives of MB Mission were gathered with Damaris and these others at a peace camp in La Cumbre, when news came that Colombia had just completed the third and final stage of disarmament called for by their national peace accord. The end of the armed insurgency was celebrated by a formal ceremony in which the United Nations certified that over 7,000 guerillas had handed over their weapons. Yet many victims still reject the peace accords, effectively polarizing the country. Damaris’ father is one of them. To this day he clenches his heart like a fist around his pain, refusing to forgive.

“It is like he is in that cage, two meters square,” Damaris says. “But I know that Jesus can set him free.”

GO Inspired by the courage and perseverance of Damaris? Embrace your role as a peacemaker.

Consider joining a short-term mission team for a peace camp in a conflict zone and share the message of forgiveness and reconciliation in Jesus.

For more information, go to mbmission.org/go

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: 10 02 An Interview with Gord Fleming, Director of the C2C Church Planting Network

By Mark JH Klassen

Mark: What do you do at 10:02 a.m. every day?

Mark: Do people ever get annoyed by the 10:02 alarm?

Gord: I stop what I’m doing and I pray a specific prayer.

Everyone with C2C does the same thing, no matter what we’re doing. We’ve got our alarms set for 10:02, and when we hear that sound, we pause and take the time to ask God to send out workers into his harvest field. It’s based on Jesus’ challenge to his disciples in Luke 10:2. He said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.

Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest.” Thousands of us with C2C are doing it every day, and Jesus keeps answering that prayer.

Gord: Maybe. But, more often than not, they’re intrigued and challenged. I was in New York recently with a group of church planters from all over the world.

This guy from China saw what we did at 10:02 and he asked me about it. Back in China, he’s giving leadership to a church-planting network of over one million people. So I told him the idea behind the practice and he loved it. He said, “Is that patented, or could I use it?” I said, “Of course, use it!” So that afternoon, he sent an email to his leadership team in China, and told them about the 10:02 prayer. The next day, he said that 300

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church leaders were praying for more workers at 10:02. The next day, he came to me again and said that all of those leaders had passed it on to their staff and ministry team leaders and now 20,000 people in China were praying the 10:02 prayer. But it didn’t stop there. On the way to the airport the following day, he said it had continued to spread and now over one million people across China were stopping to pray at 10:02 and asking the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest field!

Mark: How is C2C involved in global mission?

Gord: It’s important to remember that C2C, at its highest level, is a mission organization. Our passion has always been to see people come to Jesus, whoever they are, wherever they are. I don’t think global mission is about geography, as in where we work. God has one mission in the world today, and that’s our focus. Even though we got our start within the MB Conference in Canada, C2C has always been about the kingdom of God, a kingdom that has no borders. Global mission includes Canada and the US, but it definitely doesn’t stop there for us. Do we want to see the whole earth filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea? Absolutely!

Mark: So what’s your strategy?

Gord: Prayer.

Mark: That’s it?

Gord: Well, prayer and obedience. It’s the same strategy we’ve used in Canada and now in the US. We’ve simply asked God to lead us, to provide workers, and to provide opportunities.

And God has been faithful. We just keep responding to the opportunities that he brings us. I know it sounds simple, but we’ve worked hard to keep it that simple.

Mark: You’ve seen the fruit of inter-denominational partnerships in Canada, do you see the same opportunities globally?

Gord: In Canada, we’re working with more than twenty different denominations because we

believe that no single denomination will be able to reach this country alone. We recognized that we are stronger when we work together.

That’s true beyond North America as well. For years now, we’ve been responding to specific partnerships overseas as God opens up the doors. For two years, I’ve been serving on the Global Leadership Team of another church planting network called City to City (different from C2C), which was started in 2001 by Pastor Tim Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. Today, there are fourteen people on the leadership team, including me, and we represent fourteen different countries worldwide. C2C and City to City are working toward the same goal globally, and we are helping each other achieve that goal. As God brings us more opportunities like that, we’ll take them. We don’t want to be competitive; we want to be collaborative.

Mark: Are there similar opportunities within the MB family globally?

Gord: In April 2017, I attended the Church on Mission consultation in Thailand, which was hosted by MB Mission and the International Community of MBs (ICOMB). I came away from that event with several significant invitations for C2C to partner with MB conferences around the world. Since then, we’re working closely with church leaders from places like Germany and Paraguay. In both of those cases, they are sending their leaders to our training and we are exploring ways to further assist them. In addition, the conference leaders from Lithuania approached me with an interesting question, “Can C2C mean from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea?” I said, “Absolutely. Why not?”

Mark: What do you enjoy most about C2C’s collaboration with MB Mission?

Gord: I love the potential for a greater kingdom harvest and Jesus being made famous in places where he is currently unknown. We enjoy working with MB Mission. We share the same passion for prayer, and the same heart for the nations, so our partnership makes a lot of sense.

We are better together.

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